


Prepress

by GalaxyGazing



Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Genre: Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-18 21:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14860470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalaxyGazing/pseuds/GalaxyGazing
Summary: Once again, Bill Hearst found himself at a high class party that he didn’t want to attend.





	Prepress

 

Once again, Bill Hearst found himself at a high class party that he didn’t want to attend.

It seemed the upper crust of New York City would never tire of hosting sophisticated gatherings. Just as one would end, he was bound to receive an invitation to another a week later. No one was disillusioned that these social events were anything other than thinly veiled attempts to flaunt the host’s wealth and yet guests flocked to be seen there, hungry to build important connections via even thinner veiled flattery. Despite the pretense of it all, Bill had to attend them if his father had any say in the matter.

Still, his required presence was not the worst of these evenings. By far, it was the mingling.

Everyone expected you to already know who they are, even if you had never met, and would inevitably get snippy when you didn’t. They always overemphasized their last names and announced their companies afterwards like it gave them the worth they thought they were owed. Bill heard it in the way is father would introduce himself to newcomers.  _William Randolph Hearst, Owner of The Journal._

Even the youth who were invited were just as lavish and unpalatable as their parents, but Bill figured his best bet was to start his mandatory rounds with those closer to his own age. And tonight, there was a new face by the windows. It was always slightly less boring to hear what a new person thought of themselves rather than listening to ones you already knew explain why you should be in greater awe of them, so Bill made his way over to him.

The boy was well-dressed and well-groomed but the eyes behind his half moon glasses traced the room as if he were lost—Bill supposed that was preferable to being sized up by ruffled swans from half a parlour away.

“Lovely party, wouldn’t you say so?” Bill asked his typical opening line. It was neutral enough to test the waters but he still hated how stale the words tasted in his mouth.

“Oh, certainly. I just…” The boy seemed to look around the room once again, speaking a little terrified and almost on impulse, “…can’t figure out how people here can see each other with their noses that high in the air.”

Never once had Bill choked on a laugh at one of these parties and it was an unexpected surprise. He could approach this one differently, then. Interesting.

“So, what are _you_  doing here at this blatant excuse to boast disguised poorly as a social gathering?”

“Standing out more than I’d like to, I think,” The newcomer said with a sheepish smile.

“Bill Hearst, son of William Randolph,” Bill said, momentarily loathing how he’d been trained and scolded to announce that every time, and extended his hand which the boy shook.

“Darcy.”

Just  _Darcy_.

“And what do you do, Darcy?”

“Aside from finding myself terribly awkward at parties, you mean?” Darcy grinned, seemingly feeling a little more comfortable, “I’m studying the printing press. The setup, production, maintenance. It, uh, it fascinates me.”

“That’s something we have in common, I’m learning all I can about typesetting,” Bill said, feeling the life that the party was draining from him rush back into his chest like clean air.

He didn’t mingle with anyone else that night as Darcy kept him enthralled and entertained enough to make the evening fly by faster than it ever had at such a gathering.

He laughed and shared and, in small ways, let himself fall in love with  _Just Darcy_  until the party ended. It wasn’t until Darcy’s father came to collect him that Bill realized he was the heir to The Tribune.

 

 

-

 

 

The next social event Bill was eager to attend, immensely ready to lose hours with Darcy by talking about things the rest of the room would never care about. They made these aristocratic pageants enjoyable for each other over the course of a month before Bill inquired, “Would you like to see the press I’ve been working on?” and instantly the party was short two young men who had run off to a work room of The Journal.

But in all truth, the press itself received much less attention than originally promised as Bill pushed Darcy up against the factory wall, tasting into him with fervent kisses, shakily asking permission for everything he wanted.

“ _Darcy_ ,” Bill breathed, face buried into the crook of his neck. He savored Darcy’s quiet gasp as he began to thumb his hip through his trousers, shyly restraining himself from anything he didn’t have express approval for, “God, can I…can I touch you?”

Darcy simply turned his head to place a kiss to Bill’s temple, swallowing thickly before panting, “Go ahead.”

Gently, Bill slid his hand between Darcy’s legs, rubbing him through the fabric, causing Darcy to throw his head back against the wall.

“You’re so perfect,” Bill sighed, sucking kisses into the new neck area that was now exposed, “How did I ever find you?”

“People are easier to find when you gaze forward and not down from a pedestal, ahh,” Darcy gasped, hips rocking for a higher stimulation, “You saved  _me_  from that first party.”

In no time, Bill had pushed down Darcy’s expensive jacket and unbuttoned his vest to get at his suspenders. Slipping them off with a little too much zeal, Darcy only made him pause to get Bill’s own trousers down as well.

Hip to hip, Bill took them both in his hand, kissing Darcy breathless as he squirmed pleasantly against the work room wall.

“ _Please_ ,” was all Darcy had to whimper for Bill to give him anything he wanted and they both trembled through the best of it, forehead to forehead.

They gasped for air as they recovered, warm, happy, and very illegal for 1899. Bill cupped a clean hand to Darcy’s cheek, prompting him to open his eyes after he came down from the rush. Darcy simply nodded against him at a wordless question and smiled, readjusting his glasses which had slid to a tilt.

A bed would do much better the second time, soft and plush and much more deliberate, where Bill could kiss down the center of Darcy’s shoulder blades and watch him scrunch the bed sheets in his fists. Somewhere around the eighth or ninth occasion they’d managed to steal time, Bill could finally say with lips moving against Darcy’s collarbone, “ _I love you, Darcy Reid_.”

 

 

-

 

 

Names were everything. Titles were everything. And if you were smart, you built a life around protecting that image at all costs, according to Bill’s father, anyway.

So when Bill had humored enough women with a single date of his father’s matchmaking before explaining how she wasn’t for him, William Randolph became frustrated. But even worse than frustration was suspicion, especially when that suspicion was correct.

“Do you know how hard I worked to build this company?” William lashed, “I will not have you embarrassing me in any way.”

“I hold the family name as high as I can,” Bill breathed, angry but cautious, “I’ve gone to every social, made appearances everywhere I’m meant to, and built connections with every businessman and their children. I’ve never once disgraced the Hearst name.”

“Not yet you haven’t and, by God, you’d better keep it that way.”

Bill stood his ground in The Journal’s office while his father paced around him with seemingly more energy than he knew what to do with.

“I raised you to be smart, so you know better than to disobey me,” William started to explain and Bill could tell by the tone of his voice that an ultimatum was headed his way.

“You don’t like any of the girls I’ve picked out for you so I’m giving you three months to find your own; one of wealth and good stature and then you will settle down with her and dedicate your life to preparing to take over this business.”

“Three months? Is it that embarrassing to you that I don’t bring a date to parties?”

“It’s not who you arrive with, boy, it’s who you  _leave_  with.”

The room fell silent and Bill’s stomach sank once he realized that he’d lost the upper hand. He swallowed hard, heart racing, a mixture of anger and discomfort twisting in him.

In a few powerful strides, William came to tower over his son, arms behind his back in a rigid stance, “I raised you to be  _smart,_ ” he repeated, practically growling the last word, “so I know you’re not doing what it looks like.”

Bill’s resentment was at its peak and his bitterness disallowed him from retorting anything but a genuine response.

“If that’s what you  _know,_ Sir, then yes…I think you raised me to be just a little bit smarter than you.”

The crack of William’s hand across Bill’s face resounded off all four walls, causing him to stumble, lip split open. Bill caught the red droplets in his hand, stunned to feel a wetness pricking at the back of his eyes, one which he refused to let fall.

“Three months or you’re on the streets.”

 

 

-

 

 

Bill had done is best to explain the situation calmly, but he must have failed because Darcy looked absolutely horrified.

He wasn’t looking Bill in the eyes but was fixed on the black, healing cut on his lip and instantly realized what had transpired. Of course he did, his wit and intelligence were one of the many reasons Bill was hopelessly in love with him, but right now he wished Darcy wasn’t so quick, or at least not so scared.

“I’m not worth this,” Darcy breathed more to himself than to Bill, chest rising and falling a little too quickly, voice quiet and eyes wide.

“Of course you are,” Bill promised him, brow furrowing as he watched Darcy recoil. A moment of silence passed where he observed the wheels turn in Darcy’s mind, just as desperate for a solution, but any hope he had drained from him quickly, and logic silenced his heart.

“We have to end this, Bill.”

“Darcy, listen to me,” Bill begged, taking a step forward only to have Darcy take one back to keep the distance between them, “I don’t care about my inheritance.”

“You say that now because you have no _idea_  how hard your life will become. Boys with nothing work themselves to death to afford the very newspapers you print hundreds of by the hour just for a  _chance_  at a few cents profit that might keep them from starving another day.”

“I can typeset, I’ll find a job doing that before it comes to selling papers.”

“And who will hire you? If your father thinks you’re embarrassing him now, how mortified do you think he’d be if people knew his son was supporting another newspaper? You think he won’t call every publisher in town and threaten them against hiring you? You’d have to leave New York!”

“Katherine did it.”

“Katherine is barely surviving through vaudevilles and flower shows.”

Bill’s heart ached as he watched Darcy slip to a place in his mind where it was harder to reach him. Softly, he closed the space between them to place his hands on Darcy’s shoulders who was staring unseeingly at the floor.

“I attended party after party so I could make as many important connections as I could,” Bill confessed, feeling very bare but also very honest, “But now I know the only connection I want to keep…is you.”

Carefully, Bill slid the hands that rested on Darcy’s shoulders upward to cup his face between them. Resting their foreheads together, Bill thumbed Darcy’s cheeks, trying to calm him although the tears ran anyway, “Some things are worth  _fighting_  for, Darcy.”

And yet, despite all the reassurance Bill could offer him, it was clear that a decision had already been made.

“I’m not worth what you’d be giving up.”

“I don’t care about what people—”

“Bill,  _don’t_ —”

Bill stopped at the command because he’d never heard Darcy’s voice break like that, so quiet and wet and defeated. Darcy raised his own hands to grab Bill’s wrists, holding them gently for a moment as if he didn’t want to cease the contact, but removed Bill’s hands from his face nonetheless.

“I’m not letting you destroy your life because you placed too much value on someone you shouldn’t have.”

“Darcy,” Bill pleaded, but the echo of the door that Darcy left through was too loud and too final to say anything else.

 

 

-

 

 

The next three months were the longest of Bill’s life.

The person he pined to see most no longer made an appearance at parties and Bill knew too well why. Once again, these events returned to being sparkling champagne nightmares chorused with feigned laughter that shaved a year off his life for each one he attended.

Bored and numb and no longer passionate about anything, he hadn’t made any effort to find a wife as his father had commanded. So, when Katherine Pulitzer approached him one evening with a devilishly excited grin and the perfect proposition to spite is father, Bill had more than enough reason to accept.

With his deadline fast approaching, he’d be on the street for one type of disobedience or another so it might as well have been the type that helped the youth of New York rise against their oppressors.

_The Children’s Crusade._

With nothing left to lose, Bill told Katherine that he was at her service and she giddily took him by the hand to the basement of The World.

In truth, Bill had always admired Katherine’s fiery spirit and her headstrong nature made her one of the few worth conversing with at those hellish parties. However, she had stopped attending them almost a year ago when she defied her own father to write for The Sun.

While she left a wake of whispers as to how foolish she was to do so, Bill could feel nothing but swelling pride for Katherine—bold enough to live her own dream and strong enough to make it happen, which is more than he could say for himself.

The basement was dusty and dim but alight with the spirit of a revolution as Bill entered to see his workspace. There he found the famous Jack Kelly whom he’d seen in the papers, his right hand man, and someone whom he had never expected to encounter again.

Darcy looked a thousand times more beautiful than he remembered him.

“This is Darcy, he knows just about everything there is to know about printing,” Katherine beamed as she introduced him to Jack.

For the first time in his life, Bill heard Darcy announce his connection to The Tribune—not because he was trying to build himself up to the strike leader, but rather to let Jack know exactly who he was defying because he  _believed_  in his cause.

Darcy had already made it perfectly clear what he thought of disobeying a powerful father and aiding the city-wide strike against the newspapers of New York by arming the kids with the tools they needed to achieve victory was a one way ticket to disownment.

Darcy was intelligent, incredibly aware of his fate, and yet, here he stood. Bill almost couldn’t breathe at how impossibly lucky he was to fall in love with him not once, but all over again here tonight.

After Katherine had introduced Bill to Jack, Bill found his way over to the press which Darcy was on his knees cleaning for the long night she had ahead of her. He’d abandoned his jacket in order to roll up his sleeves, ink and dust smudging his forearms with an oily gray.

He stood, wiping a hand over the back of his forehead and brought the glasses that he’d pushed into his hair while tinkering back down to the bridge of his nose and finally noticed Bill. Their eyes met, startled only for a moment before they realized that it actually made perfect sense that both of them were here.

“Those boys are counting on us,” Darcy informed him, “Let’s get to work.”

Bill nodded, motivation rising in his chest from the importance of the work at hand.

For three and a half twilight hours the boys worked to produce stacks of newspapers large enough to reach the hands of all the children in the city who needed them. As Katherine and the newsies ran off to distribute their hard work before sunrise, Bill and Darcy eventually found themselves alone. It was up to the strikers, now.

“Well,” Bill started, gently breaking the silence, “I think you, Katherine and I have all successfully disappointed our parents in a single evening."

"Progress is rarely made without children disappointing their parents by being better people than they are,” Darcy noted on a piece of a smile, cleaning his hands with a rag that he’d found. When he was finished he extended it to Bill, which felt like enough of an invitation to approach him.

"Is that why you came?"

"I want to be on the right side of history..." Darcy disclosed quietly. By this point, Bill had finished cleaning his hands but still hadn’t retreated, lingering close enough so that when Darcy spoke again in a delicate volume, Bill was still able to hear the words he’d spoken months ago whispered back to him.

 “…and some things are worth fighting for.”

“ _Darcy_ ,” Bill breathed, filling that single name with more emotion than he’d experienced in the last three months combined. In no time, their lips were pressed, each of them holding the other’s face between their hands to pull them as close as possible.

They moved fast, ardent, and even when Darcy broke to breathe in a shuddering sob Bill continued to kiss his cheeks, his nose, his eyelids, his temple, his brow, “ _God, I missed you_.”

“I should have fought harder for us,” Darcy confessed in a voice thick with guilt but Bill simply kissed his mouth again, closing his eyes and shaking his head  _no_  against him.

“You fought today. For all of us. You risked everything so those boys can have a better life. And so can we. Maybe not the lives we thought we’d have, but decidedly  _better_.”

Darcy pushed his glasses up once more so Bill could better thumb away the tears on his cheeks. With a deep breath Darcy seemed to steady himself, nerves sorting themselves out enough so that he could finally allow himself to feel the certain happiness that only Bill could give him.

“I love you, Bill Hearst.”

 

 

-

 

 

In the morning, it was announced that the newsies had won their impossible battle.

This gave hope to millions and, more locally, to two newspaper heirs whose fathers quickly realized that disowning their sons appeared far worse to the public than having them cling closely to each other at gatherings.

This was significantly preferable to having to explain their sudden absences at events and while Pulitzer, Hearst, and Reid found it frustrating to lose, they couldn’t deny that there was something respectable about a person who refused to be bullied. Their children would make good businesspeople, it seemed.

But the last thing Bill and Darcy were searching for was anyone’s approval. Now, all they wanted to do with their time together was enjoy it.

A single stack of The Children’s Crusade newspaper had been left over from their night of triumph and thusly split between the two of them. Now and then, one of them would find a copy folded neatly into a heart in their coat pocket, or work drawer, or pressed discretely into their palm at an unexciting gala.

And it reminded each of them just how fiercely they were loved.

 

 

 -

 

 

The End

 

 

 


End file.
